Ron Paul never talks like that, and if you look at his voting record you can see his views don't line up with it either, so I'm really not putting much stock in that stuff.

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"Swim against the tide, don't follow the group, stay away from the majority, seek out the fresh and new, stay away from the poseurs, and don't be a barnacle. Be original, be different, be passionate, be selfless and be free. Be a hockey fan."
--John Buccigross

It is very disappointing that two religious nuts placed 1, 2 in Iowa. Ugh. We are screwed.

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Official Keeper of the 3 story statue of a hockey player by the artist J. Krawczyk.That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence- Christopher Hitchensph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Ron Paul never talks like that, and if you look at his voting record you can see his views don't line up with it either, so I'm really not putting much stock in that stuff.

Paul says that his handful of staffers wrote those newsletters. Even so, that link sums it up:

Still, on any map of moral behavior, this is a man who merits no one's esteem. To return to a comment above, he either believes these paranoiac, divisive, racial and sexually malicious things and wrote them himself, or he recognized the cynical political value in trading in them, or he was so stupid that not a word above was written by him, yet it carried his name anyway.

And besides, it isn't like Paul hasn't done anything recently to make it look like such racist ramblings couldn't have come from him ...

"White Supremacist" doesn't do that guy justice. He was an American Nazi party member and KKK Grand Wizard.

Even if I was a huge Ron Paul supporter before (which I wasn't, but I wasn't entirely against the guy either), there's no way I could support him after seeing this stuff.

It is very disappointing that two religious nuts placed 1, 2 in Iowa. Ugh. We are screwed.

Mitt Romney has shown no evidence of being a "religious nut," unless that definition includes anyone who is a Mormon.

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I collect spores, molds and fungus.Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower... son. The Democratic vote is the right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk? And what makes it so risky?

Paul says that his handful of staffers wrote those newsletters. Even so, that link sums it up:

And besides, it isn't like Paul hasn't done anything recently to make it look like such racist ramblings couldn't have come from him ...

"White Supremacist" doesn't do that guy justice. He was an American Nazi party member and KKK Grand Wizard.

Even if I was a huge Ron Paul supporter before (which I wasn't, but I wasn't entirely against the guy either), there's no way I could support him after seeing this stuff.

Politicians take photos with a whole lot of people. Unless there's any evidence to the contrary (which anyone can feel free to point my way) Paul most likely thought the guy the same as any other voter coming up to take a picture with him.

Also, one of Paul's principled stands against the drug war would most benefit blacks who get the short end of the stick for drug violations. One of his heroes is a Jewish economist, which refutes the idea that he's an anti-semite. He also supported Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear facility, which even Ronald Reagan, at least publicly, opposed, and has expressed the view that Israel has every right to attack Iran's nuclear program for its own self-defense, but only that the US should not participate.

If Paul should be attacked for anything, it's his fondness for Depression era monetary policies, that even Milton Friedman opposed. This is what scares me most about Paul.

Finally, those who want to harp on the newsletters have absolutely no business saying that the attacks on Obama's associations with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright were unfair.

ADDENDUM: I don't mean to say that Paul's associations, even if they are tenuous in some cases, aren't fair game. We are voting for someone who wants to be the President, so there is very little that isn't. (I personally draw the line at attacks on children.) If anything, the more idiotic attacks, like the birth certificate nonsense, probably help the targets in the aggregate.

Edited by Daniel, 04 January 2012 - 12:04 PM.

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I collect spores, molds and fungus.Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower... son. The Democratic vote is the right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk? And what makes it so risky?

Paul says that his handful of staffers wrote those newsletters. Even so, that link sums it up:

And besides, it isn't like Paul hasn't done anything recently to make it look like such racist ramblings couldn't have come from him ...

"White Supremacist" doesn't do that guy justice. He was an American Nazi party member and KKK Grand Wizard.

Even if I was a huge Ron Paul supporter before (which I wasn't, but I wasn't entirely against the guy either), there's no way I could support him after seeing this stuff.

I put way more stock in his actual voting record and platform than some newsletters that he may or may not have known about that were written 20 or 30 years ago. Substance is more important than smear tactics like this. He voted for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day among many other bills that help African Americans or celebrate their achievements and is a big opponent of the war on drugs, which has done a lot of harm to minorities.

"Swim against the tide, don't follow the group, stay away from the majority, seek out the fresh and new, stay away from the poseurs, and don't be a barnacle. Be original, be different, be passionate, be selfless and be free. Be a hockey fan."
--John Buccigross

Well since you asked, Yes. If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

1

Official Keeper of the 3 story statue of a hockey player by the artist J. Krawczyk.That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence- Christopher Hitchensph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Well since you asked, Yes. If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

So you rarely vote? Since most politicians talk about their faith and religion.

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Your unconditional rejection of violence makes you smugly think of yourselves as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than abject moral capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense, because you think its a supposed surrender to violence, leaves you no resort but begging for mercy or offering appeasement.

-Terry Goodkind

Sex Panther cologne -- 50 percent of the time, it works every time.

-Anchorman

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

So you rarely vote? Since most politicians talk about their faith and religion.

Did I say that? I am just severely disappointed in what is shaping up to be my limited options in the November.

I don't vote in every smaller election but certainly do in national / state level elections. I always evaluate the degree of religious nuttiness in the politician. By way of example, I live in PA and am in Santorum's former district. Even though I am a republican by affiliation, I never voted for him based solely on his religious views and his willingness to have them color his political positions. I voted for his democratic opponent in his last election. I was extremely happy when he was no longer in office. He is a dangerous man.

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Official Keeper of the 3 story statue of a hockey player by the artist J. Krawczyk.That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence- Christopher Hitchensph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

I put way more stock in his actual voting record and platform than some newsletters that he may or may not have known about that were written 20 or 30 years ago. Substance is more important than smear tactics like this. He voted for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day among many other bills that help African Americans or celebrate their achievements and is a big opponent of the war on drugs, which has done a lot of harm to minorities.

It assumes that Paul probably didn't write them (even though he took responsibility for them in 1996 and 2008). Instead, it's very typical political pandering to votes from the man whose supporters love him for how much he isn't a typical politician.

These newsletters were published before a decade of war that has exhausted many Americans, before the financial crisis, and before the tea party.

All three made Ron Paul's ideas seem more relevant to our politics. They made antigovernment libertarianism seem (to some) like a sensible corrective.

But in the 1990s and 1980s, antigovernment sentiment was much less mainstream. It seemed contained to the racist Right Wing, people who supported militia movements, who obsessed over political correctness, who were suspicious of free-trade deals like NAFTA.

At that time, a libertarian theorist, Murray Rothbard argued that libertarians ought to engage in "Outreach to the Rednecks" in order to insert their libertarian theories into the middle of the nation's political passions.

Rothbard had tremendous influence on Lew Rockwell, and the whole slice of the libertarian movement that adored Ron Paul.

But Rothbard and Rockwell never stuck with their alliances with angry white men on the far right. They have been willing to shift alliances from left to right and back again. Before this "outreach" to racists, Rothbard aligned himself with anti-Vietnam war protesters in the 1960s. In the 2000s, after the "outreach" had failed, Rockwell complained bitterly about "Red-State fascists" who supported George Bush and his war. So much for the "Rednecks." The antigovernment theories stay the same, the political strategy shifts in odd and extreme directions.

As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul's newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought that appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing -- Paul's admirers abandoned it.

It goes on to make a couple other points, like imagining if Mitt Romney had allowed anything like these newsletters to be printed in his book. Hello, campaign deathnail. But somehow it's forgiven for Paul. Weird. And if Paul was actually so innocently oblivious to these newsletters, how oblivious would the 77-year-old version of him be as President?

I don't disagree that he might have been pandering for votes, but that alone isn't enough to label him as "a typical politician". His opposition to campaigns funded by corporations and special interests and his platform's consistency is more important to me. Based on his voting record I am not concerned about him having any racist thoughts, and whether or not he used this as pandering for votes isn't a big enough deal for me to choose one of the other typical status quo garbage candidates over him.

0

"Swim against the tide, don't follow the group, stay away from the majority, seek out the fresh and new, stay away from the poseurs, and don't be a barnacle. Be original, be different, be passionate, be selfless and be free. Be a hockey fan."
--John Buccigross

Well since you asked, Yes. If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

Plenty of nations that casted aside "the chains of religion" were plenty violent themselves, see Mao's China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and even Nazi Germany, which, at most, tolerated certain religions.

As a contemporary example, South Korea, which has a vibrant religious segment of its population, has progressed and improved much further over the years than has its officially atheist neighbor to the north.

The "free exercise" of religion in the First Amendment is just as important as the prohibition on the "establishment of religion."

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I collect spores, molds and fungus.Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower... son. The Democratic vote is the right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk? And what makes it so risky?

His opposition to campaigns funded by corporations and special interests and his platform's consistency is more important to me.

I'm pretty sure that he is not opposed to any such thing. He's against the causes of large political donations from corporations and special interest groups, which are undoubtedly the vastly expanded power of the federal government.

Edited by Daniel, 04 January 2012 - 02:08 PM.

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I collect spores, molds and fungus.Hello fellow American. This you should vote me. I leave power. Good. Thank you, thank you. If you vote me, I'm hot. What? Taxes, they'll be lower... son. The Democratic vote is the right thing to do Philadelphia, so do.How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk? And what makes it so risky?

Barack Obama belonged to Jeremiah Wrights "church" for over 20 yrs...... with very very very radical/racist views......

And look at all those "very very very radical/racist" things he has done

It's funny to me to see how many Republicans don't want Mitt to be their nominee despite the fact he is it. Then again, they have another half year to fall in line and get behind a single candidate so maybe I am putting to much stock into the posturing and quibbles they have.

Best thing to come out of the Iowa caucus was the 8 vote differential, I love close votes (especially when the result is meaningless) it reminds everyone that a single vote (or at least a handful of them) can matter. I don't think we will have 2008 turnout levels but it can't hurt.

It assumes that Paul probably didn't write them (even though he took responsibility for them in 1996 and 2008). Instead, it's very typical political pandering to votes from the man whose supporters love him for how much he isn't a typical politician.

It goes on to make a couple other points, like imagining if Mitt Romney had allowed anything like these newsletters to be printed in his book. Hello, campaign deathnail. But somehow it's forgiven for Paul. Weird. And if Paul was actually so innocently oblivious to these newsletters, how oblivious would the 77-year-old version of him be as President?

In the 35 years and THOUSANDS of public speeches, of his political career, Ron Paul has never been heard speaking in such racial ways. You'd think SOMEBODY would've personally heard him make a racist remark if he was INDEED racist.

Make up your own minds people, don't just believe exactly what you hear and see, there is more to every story and there is a reason why the MSM insist on digging 20 years into the past of Ron Paul where a ghostwriter write a few discriminatory remarks in the newsletter that he owned.

DESPITE his praising of Martin Luther King Jr throughout his entire career.

DESPITE his fighting against the war on drugs, that damages the black community and keeps them oppressed.

DESPITE his endorsement of Cynthia McKinny in 2008.

DESPITE his unwillingness to use tax payer's money to fund a medal for Rosa Parks but instead INSISTED on using his own money to start a collection pot with the rest of congress to purchase this award. GUESS WHAT? Nobody wanted to use their own money, they wanted to use the tax payer's money. RON PAUL was the only one.

Plenty of nations that casted aside "the chains of religion" were plenty violent themselves, see Mao's China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and even Nazi Germany, which, at most, tolerated certain religions.

As a contemporary example, South Korea, which has a vibrant religious segment of its population, has progressed and improved much further over the years than has its officially atheist neighbor to the north.

The "free exercise" of religion in the First Amendment is just as important as the prohibition on the "establishment of religion."

I don't want to take this too far as I don't want to hijack this thread. However, you are making drawing incorrect conclusions. The Nazi's did have religious ties, that is a common misconception. On a macro scale I can list a bunch of countries right now who have large %'s of atheists that don't have the problems you cite above: Norway, New Zealand, Germany, Belgium, France, & the Netherlands to name a few. Atheism does not equal totalitarian dictatorships. I can name plenty of religious dictatorships and so can you so I won't bother. Besides I wasn't arguing violence or non-violence just whether I could vote for a politician who could suspend rational thought in order to believe in a virgin birth or creationism and then turn it back on again to consider an important piece of legislation.

I am simply stating that religion holds us back globally: it represses women, encourages ignorance, suppresses free thought, demonizes certain sexual behaviors between two (or more)consenting adults, dictates who can be married, discourages the use of condoms that would reduce the spread of disease and slow population growth, and causes fanatics to crash planes into buildings. These are just a few of the wonderful benefits of religion today without even bothering going into history.

If you want to discuss further feel free to start a new thread and I'll meet you there.

Edited by devilsadvoc8, 04 January 2012 - 06:16 PM.

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Official Keeper of the 3 story statue of a hockey player by the artist J. Krawczyk.That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence- Christopher Hitchensph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

Then I guess you don't trust the judgments made by our Founding Fathers. Interesting.

Then I guess you don't trust the judgments made by our Founding Fathers. Interesting.

Really? This is the tact that you would like to take? Ponder Jimmy if you will one of main premises of the American Revolution: casting off of religious control. Then wonder how appropriate your statement is.

Then consider the environment in which our founding fathers lived: Free thought regarding any religious topic was and continued to be repressed and science was barely starting to shake of censorship by the church.

Look deep into the views of great thinkers like Thomas Jefferson & Ben Franklin and you will see that they discarded much of the dogma and fictional stories of the bible and instead focused on virtues or moral behavior. Given the state of the world then, this was extremely progressive and daring thought. Thomas Paine, another of the founding Fathers, was even more progressive in his dismissal of organized religion. They were essentially deists. Which was as close to atheism as you could get in those times without being burned at the stake. Sit any of those great men down today with even a 6th grade science textbook to see what we know now and I bet you would have someone much closer to my beliefs than whatever yours are. Sadly we can't do that but we can all be thankful that science has progressed to the extent it has.

Since I was born in the 20th century, alas, I never had the opportunity to vote for or against our founding fathers. If I could, I would probably be voting for TJ and the gang since they were a lot less nutty than many of their peers. I don't judge them through the lens of today but through the lens of the environment they existed during the 1700s. They were very brave men who went against very powerful religious entities and won. So yes I do trust their judgment. They were braver men than I.

Edited by devilsadvoc8, 05 January 2012 - 08:40 AM.

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Official Keeper of the 3 story statue of a hockey player by the artist J. Krawczyk.That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence- Christopher Hitchensph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn